Introduction

Under the social contract for science, the management of scientific integrity was highly informal and contained entirely within the scientific community, as Richard Riseberg avers. The period “back in history” to which he refers is the time when James Shannon was still director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a golden age of the funding increases that Representative Fountain vigorously questioned but never really staunched. Scientists recall it rosily, for it lacked the intrusiveness of the rules and regulations, assurances, and certifications now familiar in every academic and government laboratory.

Yet it is also clear this informality was not an appropriate modus operandi. There was no notice of what constituted misconduct, no procedures for how misconduct was to be determined if charged, and no code of how it was to be punished if determined. Such action was seemingly as secret and precipitous as that protested by John Edsall during the anti-Communist hysteria.